>>>>>>>This is my first posting of lyrics here on the HR bbs. I dug up this song I wrote over 12 years ago, so I'm interested to read feedback on it in this day.By all means, post your most positive and critical feedback...
Hey hoodoo.....I haven't read the rest of the comments as to avoid distraction and red herrings that send me off on tangents that do not have anything to do with my original interpretation.
Also, I won't critique your song it terms of good and bad and my own personal likes and dislikes because that kind of critique, to me, is about as useful as talking about the weather. OTOH, I will try and objectively talk of what I think are the songs themes and the conflict within the song that creates the story for me.
So, what do these lyrics mean to me?????? hmmmm. I think it's probably more important what they mean to you but I'll tell you what I think they mean anyway.
I suspect, psychologically speaking, you at the time you wrote this song (or the person this song is about) might have sometimes gotten down on him/herself for over-thinking things and spending too much time self doubting and doubting others in a mentally constructed "inner-world" and that this often kept him/her from empowering oneself and directly taking action and connecting with others in the "real world"... which is ultimately what the person in the song really wants to do. The dichotomy that emerges is one that juxtaopposes taking action vs. sitting still. The rest of the song seems to illuminate the emotions that relate to this conflict. Right now you are probably thinking that I must be crazy to come to these conclusions but bare with me as I try to further explain.
Taking action in the world is often not easy, for anyone, for a variety of reasons and inner conflicts. I know sometimes for myself, it's because I would like to spend more time sitting still, weighing pros and cons, model building, thinking and aquiring more knowledge to make sure I have all the bases covered before I make a move. In this song the major obstacle to taking action seems also to be based on a fear of reaching out and trusting in others. This cynicism and a disability to trust in others and the self is without a doubt best expressed in lines like "Open the door, the stranger walks in, You catch his eye, that twinkle of sin" and "We are the writers of hate and of sin." There is a general sense here that people are bad or evil in nature and the writer includes himself in that category as well because of the use of the word "we." He also feels that making true intimate contact with strangers is not safe because it would leave him vunerable to the evils he perceives in others or perhaps because he feels that others will discover that he is evil. However, conversely, the lines "Do not be frightened when we take you in" and "I’ve come to take your pain away" show that the person has not lost all faith and hope in people. Deep down, he knows that people are capable of good.
This catatonic state creates a healthy sense of desperation, anger at the self, and worthlessness that can be used as a spring board kindle the fire that one needs to jump into action. These issues of desperation, anger and worth are perhaps best expressed in the chorus...."like a house of cards in a hurricane, you stand for nothing." Inaction and the wasted potential that comes with it is also expressed in lines like "you are the leader of feeders usung" and "better cut short than wasted away." Sort of a variation of Neil Young's "it's better to burn out, than to fade away." This same theme, fear of not taking action, is further expressed in "died on the vine today." And yet expressed again in "biding" my time without hour glass and sand." The need to overcome this catatonic, procrastinating, emotional paralysis is further expressed in "Don't wait for today to make war on tomorrow" and "you can not wait for them to arrange." There is a desperate sense that the person feels he/she is running out of time and must take action now before he gets old and it is too late: "He was not yet fifty as the boy pulled up a chair...A face of lines and pages, his age filling the air"
The person does not want to sit around anymore and wants to head out and conquer the world!!!!!!!.The most powerful lines in the song, as simple as they are, are the lines "I will rise again" and "I will rise up" that are repeated over and over again in mantra like fashion as if the writer of the song was trying to convince himself to set aside reservations so as to eventually find the strength to defeat this catatonic paralysis, take action, and go out and conquer the world. In the end of the song, the person triumphs and does achieve victory over the self and heals by both taking action & ultimately overcoming that aforementioned mistrust in others: "Together WE will conquer again and again."
Another very powerful line is "to prepare for your life you must die once today:" It is the old lathargic and catatonic self -- the one that does not stand up for the higher self's true beliefs, or "stands for nothing" -- that must die so that the new empowered action taking self that is developing and "rising up" can live on.
In summary, I see this song as somewhat of a "revolution of the mind"....of your own mind. Of course, appropriately, in the spirit of revolution, the song is riddled with fragmentation and does not exactly read linearly. The changing from first and third person and the appearence that there are more than one characters in the song is mostly superficial and doesn't really matter as you are in reality constantly expressing different parts of yourself when writing. That's a gestalt-esque psychological idea that maintains that all the characters within a dream (or a song for that matter) are different expressions of the dreamer/songwriter himself. I have attempted to reconstruct and re-arrange the song you can see the theme in linear fashion and hopefully you can make more sense of it of that way. Ultimately, there is a lot of conflict in the song, which is, as anyone knows, essential to any good story.
So, in hindsight, does any of this pertain to the issues you were dealing with in your life twelve years ago???? lol. I suspect it does. This seems like a very personal song and it must mean something to you if you still hold on to it a decade and change later. I wouldn't normally get so personal with my interpretation but I felt comfortable doing so since your song was written so long ago. I suspect that you wrote this song in a very "becoming" period in your life -- perhaps when you were beginning to mature, grow, take on responsibility, and become an adult....or maybe not and perhaps in response to a mid-life crisis and seeking somesort of rebirth or something?...and at the time when you wrote it you weren't exactly sure what it meant and it was all just unconsciously expressed and rose to the surface in the form of a song. I think I'm on the right track or at least in the ballpark but some, if not much, of my interpretation may be due to projections of my own issues so there is a certainly a margin of error..lol...Of course, you are welcome to think this is all nonsense if you wish....lol...